The question of when you know you’ve become a man has always preyed upon my mind, mostly because the answer seems so elusive.

In fact, there have been many times in my life when I’ve silently confirmed to myself that, yes, this is it–no more boy. I believed it the first time I kissed a girl (I was fifteen), the first time I drove by myself (sixteen), when I graduated from high school (eighteen), got married (twenty-four), and when I became a father (twenty-nine).

But I was wrong. Each of those instances might have inched me along from boy to man, but they never quite got me there.

What did get me there happened about four years ago, the day I had a conversation with a friend of mine who also happened to be a boxer. “A man never knows what he’s made of until he gets punched,” he told me.

He was right, too.

I’m posting for Katdish today on her blog so she can get a little painting done (and by painting, I mean hanging out on Twitter all day). So why don’t you follow me over there and read the story about the first time I stepped into the ring. It’s your chance to see the other side of Billy Coffey.

I listen as she talks, nodding and smiling and saying “Uh-huh” every few words so she’ll know I’m getting ready to say something wise. The softball glove I had been restringing is now in front of me on the desk, put there so she knows she has my undivided attention. This is serious stuff. Especially when you’re twenty-two.

“So,” she asks, “what do you think?”

“I think you should ask your boyfriend,” I say.

“He says he’s not worried. We can still keep in touch.”

“He has a point.”

“But I told him that’s not the same.”

“You have a point, too,” I concede.

Then, she repeats: “So what do you think?”

A year’s worth of accumulated college stuff is packed into her battered Ford outside. It’s been a long year of studying and cramming and writing, enough to make even the most ardent student eager to turn tail and run home for the summer. But she’s stuck around, unwilling to leave because of what she will leave behind.

“It’s not that far, you know,” I offer.

“It’s Utah,” she says. “That’s a long way from Virginia.”

“Could be worse. You could live in California. That would add a few hundred miles.”

I smile, but she doesn’t smile back.

“Why did I have to fall for a guy here?” she asks.

I shrug. “The heart knows what it wants,” I answer. “Rational thought is sometimes left out of the equation.”

“But he’s here, and I’m going to be there.”

“But you’ll be back here in three months,” I say. “That’s not a big deal. And there are plenty of ways to keep in touch until then.”

“But I can’t see him,” she says. “Talking over the phone and emailing isn’t the same as seeing him.”

“Because you’re in love?”

“Yes.”

The nod I give her isn’t a sarcastic one, but an acknowledgment of the truth. They are in love. Truly, madly, deeply in love. Love in its truest sense is not solely the domain of people who have been around for longer than twenty-two years. I see them on campus and I know. Love has a look.

“I don’t want to go,” she says. “I want to stay here. With him.”

“But you have to go, right?” I ask.

I get silence as an affirmative.

“And you want to know if your love for each other can withstand the distance between you?”

More silence.

She sits across from me, chewing on a fingernail. In the background the radio is playing Alan Jackson’s “Small Town Southern Man.” Fitting, I think, because that’s exactly what this city girl from Utah has found. And though I don’t know him well, I know enough to think she’d better hang on to him. Because it’s always been my opinion that those small town Southern men are worth keeping around. My own bias of course, since I’m one of them.

She breaks her silence and says, “So what do you think?”

“I think yes,” I say. “I think if you love him as much as he says he loves you, then distance is irrelevant. I think that wherever either of you are, the other one will always be. Faith is a powerful thing. Hope, too. But love? Nothing stops love. And if it’s as strong as you say it is, then that love will always be something you can stand under whenever the rain starts pouring.”

“We’ll be all right?” she asks.

“As long as the two of you don’t give up on each other.”

She smiles at that. She has hope now. Hope that life and circumstance do not have the last say when it comes to matters of the heart.

That in the end, love always holds on.

Marriages are funny things. They are defined by the highs and lows that accompany two lives being lived as one, with a little stress and joy thrown in. For my wife and me, however, our marriage has in the past few weeks come to be defined by something a little less ordinary.

This tube of toothpaste.

It’s good toothpaste, the kind that promises whiter teeth and cleaner gums and fresh, minty breath. It’s been in the fancy little holder beside our sink for the last two weeks now. It’s been mashed, pinched, folded, and squeezed. I’ve even punched it once.

There is an unwritten rule between my wife and I that whoever brushes their teeth first takes the time to lather up the other’s toothbrush, too. It’s one of those tiny but appreciated acts of service upon which marriages tend to thrive. While doing so one night last week, I noticed the tube was nearing the end of its usefulness. I had to roll the bottom up to cover my toothbrush, and then roll it up more to cover hers.

“Toothpaste’s getting low,” I told her.

“Okay,” she said.

When my wife went first the next morning, she had to roll and squeeze a little more. “Toothpaste’s almost out,” she said to me afterwards.

“Okay,” I said.

And that’s how it started. Every morning and every evening we went through the same routine, and our tube of toothpaste kept shrinking. “Toothpaste’s getting low,” we would say to each other. “Okay,” we both would answer.

It’s become the sort of entertainment that two people who have known one another for a third of their lives can appreciate. Small things, not big ones, give us the most laughs. And our fight to not be the one who breaks down and finally throws the toothpaste away has given us plenty to laugh about.

This morning, I had to both grimace and hold my breath to get any toothpaste out. Just enough, I noticed, for one person.

I looked at my blue and white toothbrush, then at her purple one. I put it on mine. I know, I know, bad husband. But she had done the same to me last night.

My wife swears she will not be the one to give in. And I have promised the same thing, though I’m secretly in talks with the kids to throw the thing away for us. I’m tired of having to go through an entire workout just to brush my teeth.

Is this whole thing a little comical? Yes. Is it ridiculous? No.

Because there is something else going on here. Something deeper.

Being a husband or a wife is work, no doubt about it. Hard work. And when that husband becomes a father and that wife a mother? Harder work.

I labor all day at one job and then come home to another, one that involves a wide range of skills. At home, my title is among other things Lego Builder, Homework Helper, Vehicle Mechanic, House Fixer, and Grounds Supervisor.

My wife has it just as bad. She’s a teacher during the day, and also at night. Add to that Cook, Housekeeper, Confidant, Rocking Chair Attendant, Bed Tucker, and Boo-Boo Healer.

We each have a lot of responsibilities around the house. Maybe too many. Adding Empty Toothpaste Tube Chucker would probably put us over the top. We would collapse under the pressure.

Tonight, in the quiet hours just after tucking the kids in and just before tucking ourselves, my wife and I together picked up the tube of toothpaste and dropped it into the trash. Then, after retrieving a new one from the cabinet, I put toothpaste on her brush and she repeated for me.

We both need a little recognition for the things we do. A little thanks for those little jobs that keep our little lives running smoothly. That she or I will be there is a given, but that’s not reason to take each other for granted. Yet that’s what we do sometimes.

That’s what we all do sometimes.

For those of you who haven’t found Peter Pollock’s blog yet, I have to say you’re missing out on something very special. He’s a great guy who writes great stuff, and I’m not just saying that because he’s asked me to guest post over there today.

So do me a favor and come on by, and I’ll tell you why no matter what I did the other night, I just couldn’t find Scooby-Doo.

I sat on the edge of my son’s bed and tapped the paintbrush against my hand.

My post last Thursday about my college friend and her professor seemed to touch a lot of people in much the same way it touched me: a mix of shock and confusion for the professor, and much love and encouragement for my friend. A lot of you wrote and said to make sure I passed along what sort of grade she received for her final exam. And since I’m not one to pass up a request from you wonderful people, that’s just what I’ll do.

I’ll recap in case you either missed the post or have forgotten about it:

I have a student worker who is a fantastic young lady and has managed the feat of maintaining her Christian faith through two years of college. She took a class titled Christian Scripture (New Testament) 102 this spring, thinking it would be an easy A. It wasn’t. Her professor, who is also the college chaplain and pastor of a local church, told her the class wouldn’t mention Jesus, since she didn’t consider Him to be an integral part of the New Testament. Worse, the professor/chaplain/pastor told the class that she had yet to reach the point in her life that she could accept the existence of God.

The class’s final exam consisted of writing an ethical will. The question: which of your traits would you leave to your friends and family?

My friend left her love to her mother, her strength to her father, her hope to her brother.

And her faith to her professor.

I wrote that God had given her an A, and she agreed with me. But she also said that unfortunately what God says doesn’t usually apply when it comes to higher education nowadays, and she was nervous about her grade.

She got her grade three days ago. It was an A.

The only comment the professor gave was that she had spelled a word wrong. Which word wasn’t specified. I suggested that maybe it was “faith” and she had actually spelled it right, but it was such a foreign word to her professor that she marked it as misspelled.

I’m not trying to be hard on this professor. I just think that if you’re going to accept the positions of college chaplain and pastor, you should probably be pretty straight on what you believe and what you don’t. But I understand her questions. I do.

I have some myself.

It’s hard to look at this world and not wonder about what God is doing and why. Hard sometimes not to have a sneaky suspicion that He’s either not paying attention or doesn’t want to.

I don’t mind saying that.

And I’m not alone in sometimes feeling it, either.

Want proof? Someone once said this: “The damned of hell suffer eternal punishment because they experiment with the loss of God. In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist.”

Mother Theresa said that.

We all struggle with the big questions sometimes. And sometimes that struggle is never-ending. It ebbs and it flows, but never dissipates. Mother Theresa fought that struggle for nearly fifty years. It was always there, churning and bubbling and tossing her back and forth.

Always there. But for a reason. Those dark nights of the soul bring a new day of faith. Holiness springs from the seeds of doubt, growing and flowering so that the weary may rest in its shade.

As for my friend the college student, she’d like to thank you all for the comments you left and the prayers you promised her. She was stunned that so many people from so many places would take the time to stop what they were doing and offer a few words of encouragement and thanks.

And I’d like to do the same. Because I’m stunned that you do that for me, too.

My family keeps a steady supply of orange juice on hand. Not the kind in a carton or a jug, though. The kind from concentrate. No other form is allowed. My rules.

I know there isn’t much difference between the sort of juice you get from concentrate and the sort of juice you get any other way. Not when it comes to taste, at least. I’ve sampled. No, concentrate is used in our home for another reason. It’s a reminder of sorts, something tangible that helps keep me focused on one of life’s greater truths.

My mother always had orange juice concentrate in the freezer. Easier on the budget, she said. And though my childhood interests tended to involve things far away from the kitchen, I was always around when she made orange juice. The process amazed me.

One frozen tube, small enough to fit into my tiny hand, suddenly transformed into an entire pitcher of juicy goodness? Simply by adding some water? To most, it was a powerful example of human ingenuity endeavoring to make the world a simpler and more orderly place. To me, it was a minor miracle.

Though water seemed to be the magic ingredient, I always thought it an unnecessary step that took a bit away from the finished product. Why bother? Water didn’t taste good. It didn’t taste at all. On the other hand, the stuff in the tube had to be loaded with taste. Sweet, with just a hint of sour. Delicious.

So why not forget the water all together? Why not just serve it right out of the tube?

According to mom, that wasn’t such a good idea. Concentrate on its own was awful, she said. It was too sweet and too powerful. That’s why water was the magic ingredient. It diluted the concentrate and made the juice drinkable.

I never bought that.

One day, alone in the house, I decided to see if she knew what she was talking about. I climbed up on a chair, took the concentrate out, and peeled off the cover. After a few minutes of letting the orange goop thaw in a bowl, I sniffed and smiled. Heaven awaited.

Thinking back, I probably should have taken a sip. Just in case. But I didn’t. I took the biggest gulp I could. Swallowed half of it, too. The other half was launched right back out through a retch that spewed the juice through my mouth and nose and left me teary eyed. I coughed and hacked and, for a moment, almost blacked out.

Mom was wrong. The concentrate wasn’t awful. It was worse.

How could something be so sweet and have too much taste to drink? And how could diluting something so bad make it so good? It didn’t make sense then.

It does now.

Because I’ve spent years wanting a concentrated life. Years on my knees, asking God to help me be and do more. My days were filled with too many mere moments. I wanted defining ones. Moments that lifted me up and rescued me from the hum-drum of life.

And there have been some, to be sure. Like the moment I met my wife. Or when I first held my children. Or the moment I knew beyond all doubt that there was a God Who loved me. But those moments have been surrounded by years of seeming nothingness, when the days seemed to drift by rather than stand out.

I hated those times. A waste of living, I thought. But I’ve learned to think differently. I’ve learned that we may be proven in our defining moments, but we are made in our quiet ones.

Drinking life right out of the tube would sooner wear us down than lift us up. Rather than enjoy its taste, we’d spew it out. It would be too sweet and too powerful to swallow.

Which I think is why God in His infinite wisdom gives our greatest blessings to us over time rather than all at once. Why our days seem to have much more of the same old than the different new. Time, I think, is the magic ingredient. It waters things down. Which is why the wait we mourn for the dreams we have may in fact be His greatest gift.

It makes the living more delicious.

I said, “You know Davey, this is why Southerners are stereotyped.”

“Don’t know nothin’ about that,” he answered, “just know I gotta clean this. Gettin’ dark, you know.”

I looked at the sunshine splayed over his front yard and still didn’t know what Davey meant by that. So I said, “Just heard a song on the radio that pretty much summed up what you’re trying to do here.”

“Well, if that song was about some guy sittin’ on his porch cleanin’ his shotgun, then I’d say it’s spot on.”

I nodded and said nothing because there wasn’t anything else to say. So I just sat in the rocking chair beside him and watched his grass grow.

In the country a person learns to decipher the hidden meanings found in the common wave. There are many. Depending upon the angle of the arm and the length of the waggle, a gesture by people from their porch can mean anything from “Stop on in and sit a spell” to “If you don’t keep moving, I’m going to shoot you.”

That’s why when I passed Davey Robinson’s house and observed the angle and the waggle of his wave, I stopped. The invite was there, even if the words weren’t.

I climbed onto Davey’s porch and saw the oil and the rags next to his shotgun. Not an uncommon sight in these parts. We take the second amendment with the utmost seriousness. When I asked what he was doing, Davey simply said, “It’s gettin’ dark.”

Davey’s wife poked her head out of the screen door just then. “Hey, Billy,” she said.

“Afternoon Rachel,” I answered.

She looked at her husband. “Davey, this is the last time I’m going to tell you. Put that stuff away.”

“Almost done,” Davey told her.

“Well, hurry up. Caitlyn’s almost ready.”

“What’s Caitlyn up to?” I asked them.

Davey said nothing. Rachel, however, did: “It’s prom night.”

I looked at Davey and smiled. “You’re actually cleaning your gun for Caitlyn’s prom?”

“It’s dirty,” he answered. “I’d be cleanin’ it no matter what Caitlyn’s doin’.”

Uh-huh.

“Honey, please,” Rachel said. “Put that stuff away. If Caitlyn sees you, she’ll go bonkers.”

“Gettin’ dark,” Davey said again.

Rachel rolled her eyes and went back inside, leaving the two of us alone on the porch.

“Caitlyn’s going to prom, huh?” I asked. “Seems like just a few months ago she was still running around here in pigtails.”

“Don’t I know it,” Davey said, running a cloth through the barrel. “I enjoyed every minute of it, too. Guess growin’ up was bound to happen sooner or later, though. This prom thing has been goin’ through her mind for months. Wasn’t much I could do about it.”

“Who’s her date?”

“Guy named Kevin. She’s had him over a few times. Seems like a good enough kid.”

“If he’s a good enough kid,” I said, “then why are you out here sittin’ on the porch with your shotgun? I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

Davey paused with his rag and said, “Fine, huh? Tell me, what sorts of stuff were you thinking about all the time when you were sixteen?”

I thought about that, then said, “Maybe you’d better load that thing.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Caitlyn came onto the porch just then. Her blue dress shimmered in the sunlight, and Rachel had done her hair up into a bun. I understood then why Davey was so nervous. Caitlyn had always been a pretty girl, but right then she looked almost stunning.

“Hi, Billy,” she said.

“Hey, Caitlyn,” I managed.

“How do I look?”

I had to be delicate here. I couldn’t well gush and say too much, not with her father sitting beside me with a shotgun in his lap. But if I said too little, Davey might shoot me anyway.

“You’re easy on the eyes, Miss Caitlyn,” I said. Davey nodded out of the corner of my eyes, and I let out a happy sigh.

“Daddy,” she said, “what in the world are you doin’?”

“Gettin’ dark,” he said.

“I don’t know what that means,” Caitlyn told him, “but please put that thing down before Kevin gets here. For me, Daddy.”

Kevin pulled up in his parents’ car a few minutes later. He was nervous when he saw Davey and me on the porch. He was more nervous when he saw Caitlyn. By the time the two of them had posed for a dozen pictures for Rachel and left, Kevin had nearly sweat through his tux.

Davey and I watched as they pulled away.

“You know,” he said, “I used to come out here on this porch every evening and call that youngin’ in. ‘Gettin’ dark!’ I’d tell her. Now here she is, going out in that dark. And I can’t call her in. Not anymore. She’s gettin’ older. Becoming a woman.”

“Guess so,” I said.

“But I know this,” he said. “She’ll always be my little girl. And I’ll always be waitin’ here on the porch until she comes home.”

A friend of mine is drowning in ancestral paperwork. Books and papers are strewn across the floor of his study. Piles of legal pads are stacked at his desk. And a giant world map hangs on one wall with brightly colored stickpins inserted not only into various countries, but specific parts of those countries.

He’s been at this for years, he says. And there’s no end in sight. It’s tough work, hard work, but ultimately very rewarding. He’s slowly gathering the pieces to the puzzle of his past, trying to answer the very riddle that we all at some time ponder:

Where do I come from?

He told me that as a child he found an old family Bible in his grandmother’s house. Inside were the names of her parents and grandparents, and theirs, and theirs, stretching back almost two hundred years. The writing was faded and the pages were yellowed, but he was captivated. Like rolling down the window of a speeding car to take one look back before the next curve.

Sadly, there were just the names. No locations or dates. And as his grandmother was elderly, she could unfortunately offer little help in the way of more information.

That Bible now sits on his bookshelf. A keepsake and a reminder, one that says this is where it started.

He’s Googled and Yahooed. He’s written letters to both our government and foreign ones. He’s corresponded with researchers and genealogists. And he’s uncovered much.

So far as he can tell, he can trace his family back to medieval Italy. Rome, to be exact. His ancestors were quite wealthy. Landowners and artists and poets. And even statesmen. Powerful people. Important people.

He likes this. He’s proud of his ancestors and their position in life. He may be a simple plumber, but he comes from good stock.

Me, I’m a little fuzzy on the history of the Coffey name. My particular branch came to this country in the mid-1600s, mingled with some Cherokee blood, and settled in the Shenandoah Valley. Before that they were mostly Irish and Dutch. Fishermen, from what I can tell, and farmers.

I could dig deeper of course, and someday maybe will. But the truth is that I’m not concerned about the more affluent members of my family tree. I don’t care about landowners and statesmen.

I want to know what cannot be known. I want to know about those fishermen and farmers. The Nobodies.

The ones who carried on my family’s name despite the poverty and the gruel and the taxes paid to oppressive kings. The ones who had to endure sickness rather than be treated for it. The common ones who lived a common existence and dared sail a perilous expanse of water to start over and live better.

I think of them often. And I often wonder if they thought of me.

Did they pause with their hand on the plow or the net to ponder if their name would still be uttered in this world a hundred generations later? Or did their gaze only go so far as the next row of crops or the next wave over the bow?

Was I as fuzzy and mysterious to them as they are to me?

I spend a lot of time convincing myself that only now matters. Only here. This. But as I continue on through my life, I’m finding that a little difficult to accept. Now isn’t the be all and end all. It is the only moment we truly possess, but not the only moment that truly matters. Because I am the result of many moments and many decisions that mattered to people with whom I share a common bond. And those who come after me, my children and their children and theirs, will be the results of my own moments and decisions.

It is, without a doubt, a heavy burden we bear. We, you and I, stand upon the cusp of history. Thousands of years of ancestors have led to us, and perhaps thousands of years more depend upon us.

Not to be powerful and important.

But merely to endure.